Oliver Marchart: "The Crossed Place of the Political Party", Sep 2002

   In the outline of the congress, the term transversality is described as
   "a new, a-hierarchical praxis of networking, which has been developing
   increasingly clear contours since Seattle, Göteborg and Genoa in the
   heterogeneous protest against economic globalization".
   [...]
   The problem with a term like transversality is that it acts as though
   it were already the answer to this question, whereas it is actually what
   raises the question: namely the question of the form of organization.
   This is at the root of all the problems: networking can be wonderfully
   evoked, but how can it be organized? 
   [...]
   The kitsch rhetoric of the Deleuzians and Negrists - which unfortunately
   seems to be hegemonic in radical political discourse now - overwrites the
   place of the absence of the party today and glues it shut. It does not
   hold it vacant, but rather makes it invisible: it acts as though the form
   of organization were not a problem, as though the problem were already the
   solution. However, the problem remains a problem. For a capacity for action
   depends on organization. And organization is not just some get-together,
   but rather implies a number of specifiable, definable criteria.

Original version at: http://www.republicart.net/disc/empire/marchart02_en.htm
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